Fire razes more than 1,000 homes in Philippines slum

Children scavenge among the ruins of a slum after a fire in Davao City on April 5, 2014.

AFP

A huge night fire has destroyed more than 1,000 homes in a slum in the Philippines' largest southern city, sending residents running for their lives, officials said.

Davao city's skyline lit up as firefighters battled for more than five hours against flames that leapt swiftly from one shanty to another in the depressed coastal neighbourhood of Isla Verde on Friday night, witnesses said.

"I'm back to zero. I don't know how I can recover," grocer Norayna Serad said.

The 28-year-old lost her store and merchandise worth 100,000 pesos ($2,225) that she had paid for with three years worth of savings from working abroad.

"Maybe I will need to go back to Kuwait and work as a maid again," she said.

The blaze was finally under control early yesterday but by then more than 5,000 people were left homeless, local civil defence officials said.

All that was left of the homes were charred or blackened posts, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Children scavenged for twisted metal and corrugated iron sheets among the ruins to sell for scrap.

"These were houses made of light materials. They were all razed to the ground," Jimmy Martinez, an official of the civil defence office for the Davao region, said.

Some of the houses had rested on stilts that stuck out of the coastal waters, and firefighters said they had difficulty moving through the narrow, winding alleyways between the shanties, he said.

More than 1,000 families sought refuge at a government schoolhouse that escaped the blaze.

Mr Martinez said the slum sat on a previously vacant government lot that had been gradually settled by impoverished migrants to the city of 1.5 million people - a common phenomenon in Philippine urban centres.

The fire was apparently started when an untended candle in one of the homes tipped over in the early evening, Davao fire investigator Ramil Gillado said.